Journal of Urban History current issue

The Limits of Black Activism: Philadelphia's Public Housing in the Depression and World War II

Wolfinger, J. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

When the Philadelphia Tribune, the National Negro Congress, and other African American organizations launched a campaign for better housing in the mid-1930s, they displayed the hope many black Philadelphians had that public housing could improve their lives. That campaign, which succeeded in obtaining federal support for housing in Philadelphia, led to the construction of several projects, including the James Weldon Johnson and Richard Allen Homes. Many of the city’s African Americans regarded the new projects with great optimism. Over time, however, they learned that government officials, pressured by white Philadelphians, would not place "black" public housing in white neighborhoods, which meant the projects actually deepened segregation. Ironically, African Americans campaigned for, and won, housing projects that improved their lives in the short term but at the same time deepened their long-term problems. Paying attention to grassroots black politics, this article suggests, helps us understand how African Americans shaped their lives, but also argues that we must pay attention to the limits of their activism.

Barcelona's Urban Landscape: The Historical Making of a Tourist Product

Casellas, A. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

Barcelona’s urban characteristics and its tourist appeal are not merely outcomes of the Modernist period or a recent dramatic urban transformation but rather the result of a long and tumultuous historic evolution. The present article presents an account of relevant historical, political, economic, and social forces shaping Barcelona’s urban evolution from the medieval times until the 1970s. The urban history of Barcelona illustrates how the landscape of a fashionable city is the result of urban planning in conjunction with many social, economic, and political events that often produce unexpected results.

New York State Housing Policy in Postwar New York City: The Enduring Rockefeller Legacy

Botein, H. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

In postwar New York State, a powerful partnership among state government, the private sector, and quasi-public authorities resulted in the development of thousands of units of high-density middle-income housing located in New York City and a much smaller amount in other New York State cities. This housing was intended to counterbalance affordable suburban homes that were luring the middle class out of the city. This article describes this initiative and focuses on the contributions made by Nelson A. Rockefeller, governor of New York State between 1959 and 1973. The state made creative use of bond financing and public benefit corporations, raising capital with unsecured moral obligation bonds. New York State’s housing finance mechanisms facilitated a model of housing development that was prescient in its insistence on melding public and private, which is now the dominant strategy for affordable housing development in the United States.

The City as Subject: Contemporary Public Sculpture in Berlin

Loeb, C. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

Berlin, a city rich in public sculpture, is the site of a distinctive body of recent work in which artists use the physicality of the city itself to reflect on and draw from the history of Berlin as a city. These sculptures grow out of and respond to the critical processes of social-historical and urban-historical investigation by architects, planners, citizen—activists, historians, and others, undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s. They intervene in recent architectural debates to challenge currently dominant conceptualizations of the urban ground plan and to reimagine historical and spatial relationships parallel to the urban reunification process. This article examines selected examples that provide a sense of how the city is taken as contemporary sculptors’ subject in both direct and complex forms.

Review Essay: The First World War as Urban Experience: Chickering, R. (2007). The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914--1918. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. xiv, 568, appendix, notes, $105.00 cloth. Funck, M., and Chickering, R. (Eds.). (2004). Endangered Cities: Military Power and Urban Societies in the Era of the World Wars. Boston: Brill, pp. ix, 191, illustrations, notes, index, $148.00 cloth. Healy, M. (2004). Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. xv, 313, illustrations, notes, index, $95.00 cloth, $55.00 paper. Winter, J., and Robert, J.-L. (Eds.). (2007). Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914--1919. Volume 2: A Cultural History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. xiii, 481, notes, index, $110.00 cloth

Lewis, R. W. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

Review Essay: "So Goes Society": Sexuality at the Center of Urban America

Mankowski, D. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

Review Essay: One Shining Second: Mythic Chicago and Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century America

Dolan, M. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

Review Essay: Suburban Disciplines: Archer, J. (2005). Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. xx, 470, illustrations, notes, index. $39.95 cloth. Forsyth, A. (2005). Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and the Woodlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. xv, 379, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index, $29.95 paper. Keating, A. D. (2005). Chicagoland: City and Suburbs in the Railroad Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. x, 262, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index, $25.00 paper, $65.00 cloth

Smiley, D. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT

Review Essay: Tales of the City: Writing London's Histories

Gray, D. D. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:27:03 PDT